The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1887-06-25

fore she should finish her course of study
and be free. This feeling doubtless arises
IN part from the real iTTitations and limita-
tons 10 body and mind which our arbitra-
ry systems of study, prepared for the
many and inevitably ignoring exceptional
individual needs, have been unable to
avoid Its naturally more common among
girls than boys, who generally have to
look forward to a career and support de-
pendent upon themselves, and who, if
they leave the ranks of general students,
do so to take up more practical and tech
nical branches. The young woman, on
her graduating day (f [ may venture a
| theory about which l can have no expert
mental knowledge feels somewhat like a
| butterfly unfolding its wings after emerg-
/ ing from its crysallis; it is a dangerous
! time for her, with the strong sense of re-
lief which thrills her through as she casts
off the shackles of school life. viii she be
butterfly slipping the sweets of life from
its flowers, or will she join the ranks of
the bees of Hymettus and gather from
those same flowers their best and richest
yield, to be saved and stored for the future
and for the race? Colleges, systems of
is a type, private and public libraries,
reading clubs, these all furnish her with
various opportunities for carrying on a
general education as fully as all but the
most ambitious can desire; but upon her
self lies the work of completing the struct-
ure of wOmanly character begun by the
influences of her childhood; and here
again she treads dangerous ground, even
while choosing moral excellence as her
aim; for inasmuch as the sweetest and
strongest womanhoOd becomes possible
only in an atmosphere of Self-unconsciOus-
ness-not undergraduates, but rather the
habitual setting aside in human inter
course of self-interest-the earnest effort
in the line of character development
may make her Extensively pious, instead of
tenderly and unassumingly religious, NOR |
ally pedantic, forbiddingly righteous, q
prig, a city set upon hill with guns firing, |
bells ringing and flags waving, instead of
that flower of womanhood which all men
recognize and honor, and all women love, |
unfolding its golden petals in the soft home |
light and yielding its reluctant fragrance to |
the world, only because it cannot withhold |
it, and because the world needs and claims |
it. 1 do not say that public life is not for /
woman, but If its duties involve a loss of |
home influences, she suffers to a CORE
spending degree. This is also true in re-
gard to men, but perhaps to a lesser ex-
tent, because the burden Of the |
worlds work is upon their ac-
customed shoulders, which are made
broad to receive it. 1t is indeed a
-, L..
home to face his destiny, and the larger
the bundle of home sympathies he carries
away with him the better his chances will
be when he has to meet the inevitably de-
moralizing influences which the world
keeps in hand for the trying and testing of
human character. A man who does his
own thinking said to the graduating class
of "a Southern college the other day, Il
thank God that none of you
have either wealth or genius"
think we can appreciate this SEN
timent without analysis, but | should
like to add to it by expressing the hope
that the temptation to make riches the
main object of life, which appeals with
special force to boys who have never en-
joyed the luxury of unlimited spending
money, will be manfully resisted.
Character Is the grand and best prize of
life, and is within the reach of all, and
once gained needs no protection of insur-
ance policies, nor locks nor guards; the in
dividual can never lose it except by his own
neglect, while to society it is a permanent
investment which does not cease when the
honor of it dies. Good men are not, how
ever, so common that they can be easily
spared, and it is a melancholy fact that
they often die when they should not-be
fore their time, impelled by the rivalries of
study, led on by enthusiasm in the worlds
work, the public philanthrOpies, the de-
mands of business, of society, of the
church, ignorant and untaught as to their
own bodies, the human machine, the
avenue of all activity, they fall into their
tracks with their work half done, killed as
truly as the soldier who perishes on the
battle field.
This neglect of the human body is
serious defect of our educational systems
From a purely material standpoint it is
better and cheaper to train an individual
for forty years of useful service than for
ten or twenty Does a school or college
only care for its scholarly standard, its ex-
animation papers, the rhetorical efforts of
it's graduating classes Should it not care
also that its pupils should keep up and add
to the physical promise of their entering
wears, that headaches and backaches and
fiat chests and round shoulders and pale
faces should disappear and be replaced by
bodily elasticity and symmetry, by the
beauty and gr-ee that come of a good
digestion and trained muscles? This is
not Utopian possibility. The fact is we
do not try to educate the body; it is not in
the curriculum; it is neglected in favor of
the mind. We easily excuse the symptoms
OF i'll health because they mean hard study
and a corresponding high standing, and
we calmly leave it to the vacations and
the doctors to put things to rights; whereas
to teach good health is as we teach spell
ing. A system of education to be worthy
of the name must cultivate the individual
as unit-not the mind alOre. neglectiug
physical training and leaving the spiritual
faculties to riot in any direction, nor the